The great notched wheel of mountain stone Has groaned awake again. Turned by a pinion, the mating teeth of the Ancient machinery will soon plumb the next depth. The crystal planes of the colliding surfaces, Unworked by ocean waves or … Continue reading Henry Aaron, April 8, 1974
The new baseball glove comes to us as firm and Determined as the cherrystone clam that Doesn’t open even after steaming. We were once told what to do about this, When we were the age of the child who, Against all … Continue reading An unhelpful guide to breaking in a baseball glove for those who have forsaken oral tradition
The grain separator of coppered brass Looked to his eyes like grandfather’s spittoon. This is why he touched it, alone in theBarn with the bands of late afternoon sun. The funneled shape invited his fingers Into the shadowed center where the corn,Fresh from stalk, … Continue reading Three Finger Brown
The cloud bank settles on the pinkened buttes, Looking like the top half of a baloney sandwich.He’s not watching it, not even looking at it.Registering it, is perhaps how you’d put it. Registering it like he does all of … this. He … Continue reading Mike Marshall is the zeitgeist
Theorem: Paul Molitor was beautiful – too beautiful to be anything but an artist. Proof: His is the forename of a man blinded by miracles, but Paul Molitor’s glowing blue Dropa stones Have no such frailties.Parisian arrondissements are piled deep within Those … Continue reading The geometry of Paul Molitor’s beauty, which left him no choice but baseball
What else could he be? Where else but the humus beneath Could he have come from? The inhuman sprawl of his body, The breadth of his unseen anchors,How he sways in derecho winds after refusing shelter, How he is as still as a … Continue reading Frank Howard is a bur oak tree
Man named Boileryard, You have risen above things, But never shall you be above Slipping into the accent of A tenement Catholic Who brawls over black bread, Who between bouts of daylight Wanders over the brick-strewn lot Where the tobacconist’s burned down, … Continue reading A consideration of Boileryard Clark’s mien and essence followed swiftly by a reconsideration of Boileryard Clarke’s mien and essence
When we ponder death, we console ourselves with the knowledge that we weren’t around 40, 50, 80 years prior and were not then troubled by that prevailing oblivion. Why, then, should future oblivion bedevil us? The poet Philip Larkin, among … Continue reading A poem about Max Scherzer’s 1926 funeral Mass in Chicago and a brief and frankly daft philosophical essay addressing why there’s such thing as a poem about the 1926 Chicago funeral Mass of Max Scherzer, who in reality is thankfully alive and well and was born in 1984
Willie McCovey has long believed that The cartographers are blind to possibility. Their learned embroideries bring out The interstates, the arterial highways with The color of the northern cardinal in nesting season. The remainder they leave to less arresting hues. … Continue reading Willie McCovey can drive from here to anyplace else in no more than two hours and 48 minutes
The front leg bends back like a bough Before it snaps in a boy’s hands. The cleats stomp shallow hollows into the clay As the belt buckle rolls toward sundown. The elbow strokes the ribs, The bottom arm locks tetanus … Continue reading Ichiro’s Swing
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